4 SEO Dos and Don’ts in 2022
Best practices to emulate and biggest mistakes to avoid.
Search engine optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Management (SEM) are some of the most abstract and complex spaces in marketing. No other service type blends technology and artistry like SEO. SEO is the optimization techniques and content strategy your business follows to increase your rankings on Google (and other search engines, like Bing). It seems simple on paper; however, the algorithms and the data read are incredibly dynamic. Staying up to date with all of the changes in technology, data analytics, and the algorithm itself makes great SEO practices a complex moving target. What’s worse—your site authority and rankings can be damaged by bad SEO – potentially costing you hours of labor and thousands of dollars attempting to repair it. Every website out there today probably has at least one thing that could be updated, refreshed, or tweaked that will impact your search authority and rankings. Today we’ll cover five of our best tips and five pitfalls to avoid with our Dos and Don’ts of SEO!
DO: Have a plan – Content Strategy is Key.
A significant difference between ‘good’ SEO and ‘great’ SEO is consistency. Our friends @ Search Engine Journal® estimate that 57% of small businesses don’t have an SEO strategy. Consistency of voice, medium, timing, and usefulness elevates your optimizations to the next level. Having solid, practical, entertaining, educational, and unique content is critical for Google to notice your brand or business. Easy way to be consistent? Put your strategy together in advance; to whom are you communicating your messaging? How are you sharing it? Who is selecting or sourcing the topics? Who is going to generate the content?
DON’T: Repeat the same strategies over and over
SEO is dynamic—and the shifts can come from the search engines themselves, changes in your market or customer base. Your content strategies should be dynamic as well. SEO is NOT a set-it-and-forget-it type project—great SEO is ongoing, unique, and adaptable to changes in the algorithm, your customer’s needs, and the needs of your business. Repeating the same strategies over and over because they worked yesterday is a sure-fire way to cripple your efforts now and in the future.
DO: Survey your audience
One of the oft-untapped benefits of running a business is the data and engagement capabilities that marketing in the modern era provides. Leverage those contacts with your customers by surveying them to gauge what content or topics would be of use to them. Allowing you to create content that you KNOW will be useful to your customers—and valuable for growing that customer base as new people discover your work.
DON’T: Only Optimize for Keywords, but not SERPs
SERPs, search engine page results – this is what appears on Google (or other search engines). By studying this page for any keyword, or related terms, you’ll find that the actual searches vary from the term itself. Think of how you look up something on Google; most people will discover they’re not searching for just keywords—there’s usually some action along with it. An example—we don’t search for “SEO.” Your search for “what is SEO, Best SEO practices, Best SEO Companies, what are the best SEO Companies, SEO Services near me.” By targeting only, the keywords and not the actual searches, or the intent behind the words, we limit our ability to reach customers where they are.
DO: Go long
The Marketing Community seems to agree—long-form content is here to stay. When engagement is critical for the health and growth of a business, marketers & Brands need to capture the consumer’s ever-shrinking attention for longer and longer periods. Investing in and executing long-form content types will be a bread-and-butter strategy for any Brand, business, or marketer who wishes to capture the customer’s attention while keeping them engaged.
DON’T: Pick a Keyword & Write for it
Once upon a time, Brands may have gotten away with writing a keyword-stuffed article to rank for their chosen niche. Today, the algorithms & criteria that grant keyword authority are far more focused on the intent of searches “SEO” vs. “Best SEO companies near me” – which one of those examples do you suppose is easier to rank for? The data tells us the latter. Don’t write for a keyword; create informative, engaging, and valuable content for your audience. Google has a name for what it means by “quality content”—the EAT principle—which stands for ‘expertise, authoritativeness, and trust.’ These are the variables Google uses to judge if your content meets its ” quality standards.”
DO Video, that’s it.
We’re not kidding; Facebook/Instagram & Youtube have hosted longer-form videos since their inception. In 2022, Video has never been a more popular medium, with the likes of Snapchat and TikTok capturing the world’s attention and thereby the attention of advertisers, marketers, and business owners. Short-form Video or long-form; Video offers an immense opportunity to connect with your customers. Have them engage on your site (and for more extended periods, too), and as intent-in-search & semantic search rise in use – so too does the SEO value afforded by video content.
DON’T: Ignore where your customers land
This is a big one for us in the marketing industry—you’d be surprised how many clients say something like, “I am getting clicks on my (insert marketing channel here) but no sales/leads/conversions; what gives?” Does your landing page on your website reduce customer friction, or increase it? Can your customer learn what they need to know about you and make the split-second decision to buy/contact you—all without hitting their scroll button? Keep to the fundamentals when designing your landing pages – a clear call to action, not overly complicated, communicate with clarity what problem your product or service will solve.
SEO takes practice, just like we say “practicing law” or “practicing medicine. The more we involve ourselves in even the most fundamental level of practice—the more we become able to see the patterns and trends that drive content strategy. Let Prophase Marketing help you build good habits with our SEO services: contact us now for a consult.
